If Biden Wants to be President, He has to Stop Being a F***ing Narc
by Hannah Harkness
Well, it’s finally happened. We’ve all reached a point in society where we are trapped in our homes due to a dystopian scenario being forced to smoke the whole pack of streaming services. The election talking points have now taken on a virus-y tone with the stakes on healthcare skyrocketing even further. But as a glazed eye disorganized hoodie wearing jerk with a confusing amount of Libertarian followers despite some of my loudly stated politics, I find myself immaturely wondering one thing: if are trapped in our houses and are forced to elect Joe Biden, is he going to at least make weed legal so I don’t have to feel the news as strongly?
If we go based on what his campaign says, it’s no, but we will decriminalize and relieve people of previous drug charges and a few other odds and ends. If we go based on history, the answer isn’t just “no” it’s “You have no reason to trust anything this narc says.” And if you go with what Joe Biden says, it might not be a coherent sentence (and also it could change the next time you talk to him).
Regardless, all of this is bad news for stoners on lockdown. Those of us fumigating our apartments last night received absolutely no acknowledgement from the debate from both cool grandpa and narc grandpa. With entire industries falling apart like wet cake around us in this quarantine, we have to look at what is still going to stay afloat. One of them is weed, and unless he’s confused enough that he forgot what he has been saying for his entire career/life until under 10 years ago, Joe Biden is a narc. I don’t care how much his policy he claims to have shifted, narc is one of my favorite insults to yell at people and I’m going to keep yelling at him until uncle Corn Pop acknowledges how many lives he fucked up during the war on drugs.
I’m far from the first person to cover this. Marijuana legalization is no longer just a left-leaning activist concern about personal freedoms. It is a major money concern from some people who used to actively oppose it. At the end of the day, money trumps politics and cannabis posted $52 billion dollars in sales and the industry had a 76% job increase according to an article in Business Insider released in May 2019. Also if you’ll look at this handy map of where Marijuana is currently legalized or decriminalized, you may notice that a lot of these states are not blue states. Also, it’s important to remember that regardless of how a state vote, marijuana is farmed by FARMERS, who are not a group of people who have been known to unanimously support NPR. My stance on the Republican Party is that the mark of them truly flying off the rails is when they start to ignore free money, and that is where they have gotten themselves by opposing marijuana legalization.
Rolling Stone detailed out Biden’s history of being a buzzkill immediately after he announced his candidacy in this article. Biden isn’t just anti-weed… he’s one of the architects of the War on Drugs that robbed of us of what could have been a generation of old hippies running everything (I firmly believe we wouldn’t have “ok Boomer” if the government hadn’t cracked down on all the acid, but we’ll never really know).
In 1974 he famously said “When it comes to abortion, amnesty, and acid, I’m about as liberal as your grandmother” specifically in regards to his weed policy. He was central in campaigning for the central “drug czar” position in the cabinet in 1982 which led to the establishment of the office of national drug control policy in 1989. He has a history of criticizing conservative politicians for being too lenient on weed. He co-sponsored a bill that led to a sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine users (with blatant consequences for poor people and people of color) and in 1996 assisted with legislation that prohibited the drug czar’s office from using any federal funds to research effects of drugs. He also gave them clearance to squash others’ attempts at doing anything that could lead to legalization, including research.
Rolling Stone touched on their correspondence with legalization advocates in the article:
“Michael Collins, the director of national affairs at Drug Policy Action, agreed with this perception of Biden, referring to him as “the architect, in all ways, of the war on drugs.” “He embraced the war on drugs. He seized every opportunity he had. He really leaned into escalating it,” he said. Mason Tvert, spokesperson for the Marijuana Policy Project, characterized Biden as “one of the most aggressive drug warriors in Congress” who does not appear to have reversed or even softened his stance on marijuana, despite the majority of the Democratic candidates vocalizing their support for legalization. “He‘s very out of touch on this subject compared to other candidates,” Tvert told Rolling Stone. “Quite frankly, he seems to be a bit more out of step on this issue than President Trump,” who has said that he would sign legislation ensuring states have the right to determine whether or not to legalize marijuana.”
I would never let the words “Biden is worse than Trump” leave my lips because I still think he would at least have his shit together enough to hire a cabinet that have more than scraps of job experience in their respective fields, but based on the amount Trump sniffles on TV, I will absolutely say that he is the bigger narc of the two. I trust career marijuana legalization advocates on their judgement of Biden and I trust Carrie Fisher’s 2016 cocaine assessment of Trump.
RIP, you glorious princess
Despite all this, Biden seems confused as to why he can’t seem to shake his reputation (he seems confused in general, but this in particular is pretty pronounced). Forbes put out an article a little over a week ago stating that Biden is still frustrated that people think he still believes Marijuana is a gateway drug (he was quoted as saying this as late as November of last year). In a recent TV interview with the Shade Room, he expressed his frustration/ supposed change at heart:
“I think we should totally decriminalize the use of marijuana and possession of marijuana. Not only decriminalize it. If you have ever been convicted of anything having to do with marijuana possession or use, your record gets wiped clean. By that I mean you will legally be able to say if you were arrested and if you were put in prison that, guess what, when you do a job application [that says] ‘you ever been arrested or in prison?’ you can legally say no.”
But he again voiced concern that cannabis can cause harm to some people.
“This is where it gets confused. There are some scientists who say it may have an impact on mental health for some people. I don’t think we should criminalize it at all but we should at least study it. Science makes a difference.”
Funny, not what you were saying when you blocked research and wasted millions of dollars spreading misinformation about marijuana via anti-drug programs that ultimately accomplished nothing. Also, I’m suspicious that “science makes a difference” if we ask him about alcohol or tobacco.
Like I said before, I have a tendency to get suspicious of politicians that blatantly ignore free money, and I firmly believe following money ALWAYS makes a politician’s stance clearer. The biggest financial loser in Marijuana legalization is always big Pharma, which some have estimated could lose up to 4 billion a year due to medical marijuana. Biden opposed marijuana for chronic pain management as late as 2007. While I didn’t do a full thumbtack-and-string Pepe Silvia analysis of his finances (I’m in a basement room at a possible end of the world, give me a break), all it took for me to find a connection was google “Biden Big Pharma”. Buh bam! One of Biden’s long time allies and close campaign aide Steve Richetti used to be a lobbyist for big pharma. While Biden is stating he is not accepting money from lobbyists, he’s definitely accepting advice from a former one. Nothing anyone says to me will make me believe that he’s not going to act in Steve Richetti or his associate’s financial interests when they total billions. He can make all the statements that he wants (his campaign staff is not braindead enough to hand him pure anti-weed statements when this is a bipartisan big money issue at this point), but the money path doesn’t lie. If he’s in bed with Big Pharma, he’s not gonna want to legalize it.
And not for nothing, I will never believe anything he says on this issue or forgive him if he doesn’t put together a sincere apology to communities of color for all of the devastating damage he did with his War on Drugs policies. I don’t think he has a hope in hell of winning those crucial votes in a general election if he doesn’t atone for what he did, either. And a coherent apology doesn’t look likely seeing as the man dips in and out of being able to put together coherent sentences.
For more information, please visit NORML’s sites and for god sake, if you want to keep avoiding reality in quarantine via THC, reconsider voting for this dork ass narc.
